White-label hosting means the customer deals with your brand from the order form to the support ticket, while the servers belong to someone else. It is not a product so much as a list of places where a name appears. Get every item on the list to show your name and the customer has no reason to wonder who is behind you. Miss one and the first curious customer finds your provider's pricing page. The basics of the model are in reseller hosting explained; this post is the list.
Everywhere a name appears
| Where the customer looks | What they see by default | Who controls it |
|---|---|---|
| Nameservers on their domain | The provider's ns1/ns2 |
You, with private nameservers |
| Control panel login address | The server hostname | Provider; you choose what to publish |
| Control panel logo and colours | DirectAdmin's default skin | You, at Reseller Level |
| Welcome and account emails | Default panel message | You |
| Order form, invoices, tickets | Nothing until you build it | You, in WHMCS |
| Sender of billing emails | Whatever you configure | You |
| Reverse DNS and mail headers | The provider's hostname | Provider |
Private nameservers
This is the one every customer sees, because they type it into their registrar. On a DirectAdmin reseller account, set your names under Reseller Level → Account Manager → Name Servers, using the IP addresses your provider supplies. Your brand zone then holds:
ns1.yourbrand.com. 3600 IN A 203.0.113.10
ns2.yourbrand.com. 3600 IN A 203.0.113.11Register the same two hostnames with the same IPs as glue records at the registrar of yourbrand.com. Then verify, the way a stranger would:
dig +short NS yourbrand.com
dig +short A ns1.yourbrand.com
dig +short NS customerdomain.co.uk
dig SOA customerdomain.co.uk @ns1.yourbrand.com +norecurseThe third command, run against a customer domain created after the change, should print your two names and nothing else. Record types are explained in DNS record types.
Tip: new users get your nameservers in their zone automatically. Users created before you set them keep the old NS records until you edit each zone. Set the names before you create the first account and the problem never exists.
The panel address
DirectAdmin listens on port 2222, and the address in a default welcome message is the server's hostname. What you publish to customers is your choice, but check what the certificate says before you print an address on anything:
openssl s_client -connect yourbrand.com:2222 -servername yourbrand.com </dev/null 2>/dev/null \
| openssl x509 -noout -subject -ext subjectAltNameIf the names listed include the address you tested, customers can log in there without a browser warning. If they do not, publish the hostname your provider gave you. A certificate warning on the login page does more damage to your brand than a neutral hostname ever will.
The panel itself can carry your logo and colours. DirectAdmin's Evolution skin shows no provider name to users, and resellers can customise it for the accounts under them from Reseller Level.
The welcome message
DirectAdmin sends each new user a message with their login details, and the reseller can edit it. Read the default once, as a customer. It should mention your panel address, your nameservers, your support address and nothing else. If you provision through WHMCS, the customer also receives the WHMCS hosting welcome email, so make the two agree or switch one off. Two welcome emails with different login URLs is a support ticket on day one.
Billing under your name
WHMCS is where the brand is most visible, because it is the only part the customer visits on purpose. The settings that matter are under System Settings → General Settings:
| Setting | Use |
|---|---|
| Company Name | Appears on invoices, emails and the client area |
| Logo URL | Shown on invoices and email headers |
| Pay To Text | Your legal name and address on every invoice |
| Domain / WHMCS System URL | https://billing.yourbrand.com/ |
| Mail tab: From name and email | The sender of every invoice and reminder |
On the server record (System Settings → Servers), fill in your own nameservers and, as the hostname, the panel address you decided to publish. The welcome email template pulls both from there. Building the products and the server connection from scratch is covered in starting a hosting business with WHMCS and DirectAdmin.
On our reseller plans a WHMCS Starter licence for up to 250 clients is a $13.90 a month add-on, and is included with Partner Pro on annual billing.
Tip: WHMCS adds a "Powered by WHMCompleteSolution" line to the client area unless the licence has branding removal. It names the billing software, not your host, and most customers never read it. Check whether your licence includes removal before promising yourself a clean footer.
Mail from your brand domain
A billing email from billing@yourbrand.com that fails authentication lands in spam, and then the brand is invisible. Three records on the brand domain:
yourbrand.com. IN TXT "v=spf1 a mx ip4:203.0.113.10 ~all"
x._domainkey.yourbrand.com. IN TXT "v=DKIM1; k=rsa; p=MIIBIjANBg..."
_dmarc.yourbrand.com. IN TXT "v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc@yourbrand.com"DirectAdmin generates the first two when the domain's DNS is on the server; x is its default DKIM selector. Confirm what is published:
dig +short TXT yourbrand.com
dig +short TXT x._domainkey.yourbrand.com
dig +short TXT _dmarc.yourbrand.comTip: start DMARC at p=none, read the reports for two weeks, then move to quarantine. The reasoning behind each record is in SPF, DKIM and DMARC explained.
Outgoing mail on a reseller plan counts against a daily limit shared by all your accounts (1,000 a day on Partner Grow), so one customer's mailing list is everybody's problem.
What you cannot hide, and why it does not matter
Two things show the provider to anyone who goes looking.
dig +short A customerdomain.co.uk
dig +short -x 203.0.113.10The reverse lookup returns the server's real hostname, and the full headers of any email sent from the platform show the same name in a Received: line.
This is true of every white-label host, including large ones that resell capacity themselves. What matters is that you never claimed otherwise. Say "our servers are in France" or "we host in OVH datacentres", not "our datacentre".
Support without the customer meeting your provider
The customer opens a ticket with you. You answer what you can from the panel. For anything about the platform itself, you open a ticket with the provider, under your own account, and relay the answer in your own words.
Three rules keep the brand intact:
- Never forward a provider's reply. Rewrite it; forwarded emails carry signatures and headers.
- Never paste a provider's knowledge base link. Write your own short answers for the ten questions every customer asks.
- Give customers a response time you can keep given that some answers involve a second ticket. Our support is by ticket, so do not promise instant chat answers.
Pre-launch checklist
dig NSon a test customer domain returns only your nameservers.- The panel address in the welcome message loads without a certificate warning.
- Welcome message and WHMCS welcome email agree on URL, username and nameservers.
- An invoice PDF shows your company name, logo and address.
- A test invoice email passes SPF, DKIM and DMARC at Gmail.
- The suspended-account page and the default page for a new domain show nothing you would not want a customer to see.
- Your terms and privacy policy name your business as the provider of the service.
- Prices are set with support time included; the worked numbers are in pricing hosting plans as a reseller.
Run through it with a test account and a domain you own, from a browser that has never logged in to anything. What you see there is exactly what the customer sees, and it is the only test that counts.